


Almost Lovers

by bitchblossom



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: fem!lock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-23 05:44:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/618749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bitchblossom/pseuds/bitchblossom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(fem!) Sherlock and John...  An overview of their relationship pre- and post-Reichenbach.  Fluff, tiny bit of smut, some angst.  My beta said she cried.  Enjoy!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Almost Lovers

Almost lovers. The phrase described their relationship perfectly, John reflected sadly. Sherlock was such a wonderful woman, and yet she was not like a woman at all. She was cold and calculating while on a case, and insecure and unstable when she felt like she'd failed. When she cried from frustration, he was there to hold her. When she stormed about the flat, bored from lack of mental challenge, he took her to dinner or to the cinema to distract her. When her blood burned with the fervor of being on a case, he was there beside her, a steady, calming presence. He had been her rock, her stability, her home. If it hadn't been for John Watson, Sherlock Holmes would still be a drug addict, depressed and alone, solving cases when she could but unable to do much else. He had come into her life and pulled her out of the despondent rut she'd fallen into. The track marks on her arms had healed, and she'd stopped sneaking cocaine when he wasn't looking. He'd brought her back to life. She laughed now, on occasion, and her energy was focused on her work so that she had time to relax a bit. Not that she would admit to liking relaxation, but he knew she did. After a particularly exhausting case, she'd fallen asleep on him in the cab on their way back to Baker Street. After that, it had happened every time. One night, they'd been watching crap telly together on the couch and she'd just leaned over and snuggled into his shoulder, falling asleep within seconds. He'd wondered at first whether or not to leave, but when he shifted his arm, she wrapped her arms around his torso and wouldn't let go. He slid over so that he was lying full-length on the couch with Sherlock lying half on top of him, nuzzling into his chest. They fell asleep that way, and when they woke up they simply went about the day as if nothing had happened. After that night, and the cab naps, they were just affectionate, in a strange way. Sherlock flinched when anyone else touched her, but John's hands were always welcome. He'd run them through her hair, or rub her shoulders, or hold her hand, and they thought nothing of it. They were like brother and sister, but somehow something more. They were a unit, and nothing was going to change that.

And then there had been Moriarty. Sherlock was perfectly capable of handling him, but John still worried. After the bomb incident, Sherlock started having nightmares, so John slept with his arms around her every night. They'd slipped into a pattern, and they didn't care what people said. They weren't lovers, but they were together in their own special way. They'd never spoken a word to each other about it, yet volumes were passing between them every day. The night before Sherlock threw herself off the roof of St. Bart's to save his life, John had finally worked it out.

Sherlock was out that evening, for once doing the grocery shopping herself. John was sitting in his favorite chair, typing up the events of the day for his blog. He'd reached a block, so he set the laptop aside and sat there thinking about the woman he shared this space with. Sherlock was brilliant, she was kind, and—she was beautiful as well. At 6', she stood several inches taller than John. She was slim, and the curves she had were those of muscle. Her dark hair was cropped so that it just brushed the collars of the button-ups she always wore, and it curled invitingly near the ends. Her cheekbones were unusually high and somewhat sharp, but he found them lovely. Her eyes were the most intriguing part of her mysteriously alluring presence. When hunting a criminal, they were steely grey and dangerous. When she was excited over a new lead, they went blue with flecks of grey. And when they were cuddled up and relaxing, they were a deep green that melted into brown. Those were the eyes that he loved the best. And yes, he did say love. Because, he realized, that's what it was. And now that he thought about it, he'd loved her for longer than he suspected. He hadn't been with anyone since before his army days because the PTSD was too much for any woman he'd ever met. But Sherlock, as sociopathic as she was, understood him in a way no one ever had. And he understood her, and they both knew it. After three years of being together nearly 24/7, he knew what she wanted almost before she did herself and vice versa. If that wasn't love, he didn't know what was.  
Then she walked through the door, and he jumped up to help her with the bags. As he was shuffling various jars of body parts to make room in the fridge for the milk, he wondered how to tell her what he'd just discovered. She seemed quiet, but that wasn't unusual. They finished up and headed for the couch, each grabbing reading material on the way. John sat at one end with Sherlock's head in his lap, and they remained silent for nearly an hour as they lost themselves in their respective reading. Or at least, Sherlock did. John sat and pretended to read, still thinking about how to bring up the subject of his earlier musings while one hand idly played with his partner's hair. Suddenly, she sat bolt upright and looked straight at him, flinging her paper aside. He laid his book on the table and turned back to face her accusatory stare.  
“John, won't you tell me what's bothering you?”  
“What makes you think I'm bothered?”  
“You haven't turned the page in almost half an hour, and you keep looking up at Yorick, or over into the kitchen. Something's upset you, and it's got something to do with me.”  
“I'm not even going to ask how you knew that. But as usual, you're right.”  
“Alright, what is it?”  
“Well, Sherlock, I've been thinking, and--”  
“You shouldn't do that. It's bad for your health,” she teased gently, taking his hand.  
“Well, I have been, and I need to talk to you about... Well, about us.”  
“What about us? We're friends, and partners, and we live together. That's pretty much it.”  
“Yes, but I need to know something. I know you've said you don't get involved, emotionally I mean, but... I need to know what this means to you.”  
“John, I think what you're trying to say is that this, meaning our relationship, has become something you can't do without, and you want to know if I feel the same way.”  
“Um... I suppose so.”  
“And, John?”  
“Yes, Sherlock?”  
“This is me telling you that, without you, I'd be dead right now. Before I met you, I was an addict. I forgot to eat or sleep, and I didn't know how to keep myself alive while doing what I loved. As brilliant as I am, I'd never have survived. You saved me, and for that, I'm grateful.”  
“Yes, but do you—can you—love me? And I don't mean as a friend. I don't want us to not be friends, but the way things are right now, we might as well be an old married couple.”  
“John, are you asking me to marry you?”  
“Well, I don't really know. I just wanted to tell you.”  
“Tell me what, John?”  
“That I—well, that I—I love you. And I don't ever want to be without you.”  
“John?”  
“Yes, Sherlock?” Her face was steadily getting closer to his, and he would have been scared if it weren't for the gentle tone of her voice.  
“I love you.” And then he cupped her face in his hand and pulled her in. Their lips met, and Sherlock sighed happily. It was a tentative kiss, a tender and sweet one. They parted, but their foreheads stayed touching, and they simply looked at each other. Then, overwhelmed with the feelings that had been building up for years, he took hold of her by the shoulders and pushed her over onto her back, kneeling over her and kissing her with all of the passion in his gigantic heart. She kissed back, letting him slip his tongue between her lips and tracing it with her own. He lowered himself onto her, until every possible inch of them was touching. Then she rolled them over, off of the couch and onto the floor so that she was on top, straddling his hips and kissing him as if she'd been wanting to ever since they met. Which, come to think of it, wasn't all that unlikely. Her hands were in his hair, and his were sliding up and down her sides, finding their way underneath her purple button-down and up the center of her back. She grabbed him by the front of his jumper and pulled him up, continuing the motion and separating them for a brief moment as it slid over his head, revealing the army-tanned chest beneath. Sherlock ran her hands over his bare skin delicately, twirling a forefinger in the hairs in the center of his chest. John then reached for her shirt buttons, slowly working each of them out of their respective buttonholes. He slid his hands along her collarbone, slipping the purple shirt off her slim shoulders to reveal the most basic of underwear beneath. He ran his hands up from her hips to the closure at the back, but she stopped him. Taking his hand, she stood and headed for the bedroom where they'd slept innocently for the past 3 months. But tonight, there would be little sleep for these two.

He hadn't known at the time that it would their last night together. She had, and perhaps that was why she'd let him go as far as he had. She really loved him, of that he was sure. They'd made love that night, neither really sure what was happening, only that they needed each other and loved each other. The next morning, they were back on Moriarty's trail, which that afternoon separated them permanently. He remembered the phone call, the determination in her voice, that awful moment when he rounded the corner and saw her standing there on the edge of the rooftop of Saint Bartholomew's Hospital ready to throw herself off. He remembered pleading with her not to jump, and running, but not fast enough. He hadn't even gotten to her fast enough to do anything but grab her wrist before they took her away. But for a doctor, that was enough. He'd felt nothing, and at that moment, he felt as though his own heart had stopped as well. When they found Moriarty on the roof with a bullet through his head, he hadn't been conscious enough to rejoice that Sherlock had done that much at least. Why had she said she was a fake, when she obviously wasn't? He didn't believe it, but the rest of the world did. For months, he had to put up with the headlines and the stares and the sneers. Not only did they think Sherlock was a phony, but they also believed firmly that he, John Watson, was her lover and a perpetuator of her fake genius. The first part was sort of true. And the second? Well, he believed in her, but that didn't make him an accessory to fraud, because there was no fraud. Nothing but an extremely brilliant woman that no one else truly cared about.

 

Three years had now passed since that awful day. At first, he'd gone every day to her grave, begging, pleading with her not to be dead. Then he went every weekend. He'd gotten himself a job as far away from St. Bart's as he could, and he rented out his old room upstairs. He slept in the bedroom they'd shared, clinging to the purple shirt she'd worn on that last night. He wore her blue scarf all the time, being careful not to erase her scent from it but loving it because it was hers. He never blogged about that last day. In fact, the blog post he'd been working on the evening before her death was never finished, and he had yet to post anything else. Instead, he kept a journal. Every night he sat in bed or in his chair, surrounded by everything that was hers, the entire flat permeated with her presence, and he wrote her a letter. Sometimes he told her how much he loved her. Sometimes he ranted on about how angry he was that she would dare leave him like that. Sometimes he pleaded with her to come back. Sometimes, he talked about the future they would have had. He'd bought her a ring before the funeral, but they wouldn't let him see the body, and he wouldn't let anyone else put it on her finger, so he kept it on his nightstand. He had bought one for himself too, and that he wore nonstop, not even taking it off to sleep or bathe. He cried at her funeral, he cried every time he visited her grave, he cried when he wrote her those letters. John Watson, M.D., cried more in the first few months after losing Sherlock Holmes than he had in his entire life previously.  
Now, as he wrote the 1,095th letter to his precious dead detective, he began to cry again. This time he was sitting in his chair, staring at the empty space on the couch that she should have been occupying. He laid his head on the leather-bound book, the 5th in a series, and let his tears run the ink on the letter he'd been writing. It was three years to the day, and he still could not help hoping that somehow, somewhere, Sherlock was alive. He got up and headed for the kitchen, hoping that a cup of tea would soothe him. He started the kettle and was reaching into the cupboard for a cup when he felt something behind him. Before he could turn around, a pair of familiar arms were around his chest, and he felt a soft breath on his ear before a chin came to rest on his shoulder. He put the teacup down in slow motion, afraid to turn around lest it be an apparition. But turn he did, and what he saw made him faint with shock. Sherlock Holmes herself stood behind him, and as he fell into her arms, she whispered softly “John, I'm not dead.”

When he woke the next morning, he figured it had been a dream. Although, if it was a dream, how did he get from his chair to the bed? He didn't remember that part. And—why was Sherlock's coat here? It was the one she'd been wearing when she died, and he'd requested that they bury her in it. He had never thought he'd see it again, but there it was in its usual spot, hanging off of the hook on the back of the door, which stood open. Then he saw movement in the kitchen, and he silently rolled off the bed while grabbing his pistol. He crept to the door just in time to see someone-a tall someone-settle into his—no, Sherlock's—chair. The top of a dark head was just visible, and he swiftly moved to just behind the chair, clapping the gun to the head of the mysterious person as he said menacingly “Don't move, or I'll decorate the walls with your brains.”  
“That would be a pity, wouldn't it? Especially considering the quality of the brains you are referring to.” At the sound of the familiar voice, the gun fell to the floor as he whirled around the side of the chair, coming face to face with his beloved consulting detective. He was on his knees in front of her now, staring dead into those eyes that he thought were closed forever. They were frozen for a moment, then she gently caressed his face and whispered softly “I'm sorry, John.”  
His head dropped into her lap, and great violent sobs shook his entire body. She slid off of the chair so that they were both kneeling on the floor and gathered him into her arms. He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her, gasping through the tears, asking why, why, why. She rocked him back and forth, stroking his back and arms with her slender fingers. They stayed like that for a good hour, him soaking the front of her shirt (purple, of course), and her tears streaming down the back of his jumper. Then he looked up, took her face in both his hands, and kissed her. Softly, gently, but with all the pain and sorrow of the last three years pouring out between them and permeating every nook and cranny of the tiny flat. John took the lead and moved them to the couch, lying down and tenderly pulling her down atop him, so that they were in the same position they'd been in that first night they'd spent in each other's arms.  
They lay there, caressing each other and simply immersing themselves in the other's presence, for the entire morning and most of the afternoon. Then, sometime in the late afternoon, John remembered something. He gently rolled out from under the now sleeping Sherlock and headed for the bedroom, brushing himself off and snatching a small item from his bedside table before returning to the couch. Sherlock had woken, and was sitting up waiting for him. He sat down beside her and took her hand in one of his, slipping the other into his trouser pocket.  
“Sherlock, I love you.”  
“John, I love you too.”  
“And I don't ever want to be without you. I want to know for sure that you won't ever be able to leave me.” And he pulled out the thing he'd picked up from his—no, their—room.  
“Sherlock Holmes, would you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”  
And as she stared into his eyes, he knew what the answer was. He tenderly slid the ring onto her left fourth finger, and then kissed her once more with tears in his eyes.  
At that most inopportune moment in walked Mrs. Hudson, arms full of groceries and ready to fuss over John for not eating dinner. But when she saw the lovers, locked in an embrace, she silently left the flat muttering to herself that she'd return later.

 

It took them three months to get around to an actual wedding. Sherlock didn't want a lot of fuss, and quite frankly neither did John, but it did take them a while to get a license. Mrs. Hudson played mother to them both and booked the venue. Molly Hooper picked out the cake and the flowers (of course Sherlock didn't have time for that), and Mycroft generously footed the bill. Sherlock didn't want him there, but John talked her into it after reasoning that because he paid for it, he ought to be able to share in it. Lestrade was best man, and Molly was maid of honor. A few of Sherlock's former clients were there, but it was altogether a tiny affair. The ceremony was traditional except for the fact that Sherlock refused to wear a dress, and instead chose a white tailed tuxedo with a purple dress shirt. No one but the two of them knew the significance of the purple shirt, and they liked it that way. The reception was held in a small dance hall, and Mrs. Hudson cried when Sherlock and John had their first dance. Then, as Lestrade and Molly and Mycroft and Mrs. Hudson danced, they sat at a table and fed each other cake, chuckling occasionally but mostly sitting quietly, holding hands and watching the dancers.  
Their marriage was destined to be much like that first day, quiet and calm but communicative nonetheless. That was how their relationship had been for years, and a ceremony and a ring couldn't change it. They never even thought of the phrase “'til death do you part” that was part of their vows. They would live forever, everyone knew it, and there was nothing but death that could separate them. It was merely a formal declaration of something that had been in existence for years. They continued solving crimes together, and—hesitant as I am to say that they lived “Happily ever after,”—well, they did.


End file.
